Fighting the spread of AIDS in Southern Africa

“The
world has never before experienced death rates of this magnitude
among young adults of both sexes
across all social strata.
It is hard to play down the effects of a disease that stands
to kill more than half of the young adults in the countries
where it has its firmest hold.”—UNAIDS Report

According to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS,
18.8 million people around the world have died of AIDS, 3.8 million
of them children, and 34.4 million people are living with HIV,
the virus that causes AIDS. In African nations, which have been
particularly hard-hit by the epidemic, HIV is spread primarily
through heterosexual sex.

As grim as those statistics are, the UNAIDS report also contained glimmers
of hope-signs that AIDS prevention activities in Africa are having some effect:
Infection rates have fallen in Uganda and Zambia, and Senegal has stabilized
its HIV infection rate at less than 2 percent. (In developed countries, the
rate is well below 1 percent; it exceeds 10 percent in 16 African nations.)
Uganda heavily promoted prevention messages through community organizations
and religious leaders in the early 1990s, lowering that nation’s infection
rate from 14 to 8 percent. A large increase in condom use is believed to have
contributed to both lower rates of infection and significant declines in teenage pregnancy.

Education and social marketing initiatives have proven to be
effective prevention strategies in several African nations. Building
on successful school-based
prevention efforts in the United States, EDC/HHD is collaborating with other
international organizations to enlist African teachers in the fight against
AIDS. In partnership with Education International, the World Health Organization,
UNAIDS, UNESCO, and African teachers, EDC/HHD developed an HIV prevention
training manual for use in Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi,
Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland,
and South Africa.

The involvement of Education International, the world’s largest
teachers union, will ensure widespread dissemination of the
manual. The organization will distribute
the publication to its affiliates and members throughout southern Africa. “As
a partner with EDC/HHD, Education International shares a sense of urgency to
address AIDS prevention needs by working with both schools and individual teachers,” says
Phyllis Scattergood, who coordinates school health programs for EDC/HHD under
its WHO Collaborating Center to Promote Health Through Schools and Communities. “Teachers
can be true agents of change in preventing the further spread of this devastating
disease in the classroom and the community,” adds Scattergood.

Much of the manual is devoted to building teachers’ communication
and advocacy skills around HIV prevention, mainly through role-playing,
brainstorming, and
small-group discussions. The manual includes sections on what teachers can
do to protect themselves against the virus, how to address discrimination,
and how to equip students with negotiation and other skills to protect themselves
against HIV. Teachers are also encouraged to expand their role beyond the
school and take leadership positions in their communities,
both to prevent HIV and
to advocate for those with the virus.

The manual is unique because it grows out of a shared endeavor
between the teachers and the international agencies. The teachers
served as advisors and
partners to ensure that the manual was sensitive to their language, customs,
and culture. Many commented that other manuals, developed without teacher
involvement, simply sat on school shelves untouched.

Because of the tremendous stigma surrounding the disease and
the difficulty of broaching the topic of sexuality, teachers
are often afraid to talk about
AIDS with children. “Educators, parents, and community members know that
when they don’t answer a controversial question, the child will never ask it
again-and that places the child at risk,” says Scattergood. The manual
will give teachers a way to initiate discussions about these challenging topics.